Nazi assignment causes uproar

Saturday

Apr 13, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 13, 2013 at 12:56 PM

ALBANY, N.Y. - A high-school English teacher in New York state who asked students to imagine they were Nazis and give reasons why Jews were evil could be reprimanded or dismissed, a school-district superintendent said yesterday.

ALBANY, N.Y. — A high-school English teacher in New York state who asked students to imagine they were Nazis and give reasons why Jews were evil could be reprimanded or dismissed, a school-district superintendent said yesterday.

Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard, superintendent of Albany schools, apologized at a news conference and pledged that officials will personally express regret to Albany High School students who were given the assignment, and to their families.

“This assignment for some of our students at Albany High School was completely unacceptable. It displayed a level of insensitivity that we will not tolerate in our school community,” Vanden Wyngaard said.

She appeared with representatives of the Anti-Defamation League and the United Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York at the federation’s office in Albany.

The teacher, whom Vanden Wyngaard declined to name, was removed from class and faces disciplinary action. “It can go anywhere from a letter of counsel, to a letter of reprimand, all the way through to termination,” Vanden Wyngaard said.

The teacher gave three classes of 10th-grade students a persuasive-writing assignment as part of a class project to demonstrate how Nazis thought and showed their loyalty to the Third Reich before World War II.

“You need to pretend that I am a member of the government in Nazi Germany, and you are being challenged to consider that you are loyal to the Nazis by writing an essay convincing me that Jews are evil and the source of our problems,” the assignment instructions said.